


With Room To Grow In

by vass



Category: White Boots
Genre: F/F, Skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-02
Updated: 2008-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which no one gets too big for her boots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Room To Grow In

**Author's Note:**

> Written for rosemaryandrue in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge.  
> Thanks to Dzurlady for audiencing.

_Cyril Moore  
Born 20 December 1917  
Drowned while ice-skating, 11 February 1942  
World Champion Figure Skater  
"Go, and do thou likewise"_

 

Lalla Moore was a happy young woman for the most part. She had a lot of money, and enough fame for anyone. She had a surprisingly loud, brassy voice, an infectious chuckle, glossy brown curls, bewitching dark eyes, and a promising career as a professional skater. She had a crowd of cheerful young men and women who took her to parties and bought her drinks and told her she was beautiful. She had a very nice young woman as her manager, who didn't watch everything she did the way her Aunt Claudia had used to. And in a sense she had a family, because the Johnsons had told her she could be part of their family when they were all children.

The reason why Lalla Moore was only happy for the most part, and not entirely happy, was connected to the Johnsons and their offer to make Lalla part of their family. Now, the Johnsons were a warm and welcoming family who liked to share all the best things they had, and the best thing they had was each other. For a long time, the Johnsons had had almost nothing but each other, as Charles, the children's father, was a greengrocer and had his fruit and vegetables from his brother William, who had inherited their father's home and garden, and kept all the best produce for his own dinners.

The Johnston children and Lalla had sworn on the stomach of Uncle William to improve their family's fortunes, and whether because of the oath, their natural resourcefulness or just a change of luck, these days the Johnsons were not living only on cabbage and a few old skinny rabbits, as they once had when Lalla had first met Harriet Johnson.

Uncle William was dead now, of an apoplectic fit, and Olivia and Charles Johnson had sold the Johnson family home for quite a large sum, to make into a factory. Charles and Harriet and Edward had been quite shocked about this, but Toby and Alec at once demonstrated that if one has a large estate and is letting the manor house, the lodge, and all but two rooms of the little house on the edge, and is still only making enough money by it to keep the up the estate, then inflation and increasingly urgent repairs will soon mean that one cannot even keep up. Ruin is the inevitable result.

Charles was not happy to hear this, but he didn't have a choice, and Olivia was rather happy that she didn't have to be the one making all the arrangements to keep the home up on less and less money. As a result, Charles had given up educating the public to like vegetables that they didn't like; and he and Olivia were now living in a smaller house in a nicer part of London, on a comfortable fixed income.

And what had happened to the children? Toby was at Cambridge. He had taken his degree already, but instead of leaving he had turned around and started studying for another one. It was the family joke that Toby might never leave his college if he could manage it. It was fortunate that he was making enough money by tutoring undergraduates to cover his board. His letters home were all about asymptotes and combinatorical functions, and so was his conversation whenever he came home for holidays, until his brothers sat on him and made him stop.

Olivia had once visited him at Cambridge and found him - Toby - actually crying, and she'd wondered if they'd done the right thing in sending him up, since this was most unlike Toby of all her children; but he had told her he was quite happy there, only he was studying something called the incompleteness theorem, which meant that not everything could be proven by mathematics. This didn't surprise Olivia at all, but evidently it had taken Toby very hard. But with hard work he recovered from the disappointment.

Alec had been to agricultural college, thanks to his friend Mr Pulton. For the first few months, the more he learned, the more he had revised his own ideas and plans. When they studied horses, he thought of his own horse and cart dream, and then of working in stables and saving money to pay for it. When they studied wheat he thought of working in a flour mill. But, fortunately, he was hired right out of agricultural college by a family with a house even bigger and grander than Lalla's aunt and uncle's house, which had under-gardeners to assist him, for he was to be the head gardener! As the position included a place to live and few other expenses, he and Toby worked out together that at the end of five years, if he didn't like it and want to do more of the same kind of work, he could buy his own pony and trap and set up in Covent Garden if he wanted to.

Harriet was working as hard as only an amateur athlete can work. Lalla's Aunt Claudia had not been very taken with the idea of Harriet as a 'champion grim', but she had very generously continued to pay for Harriet's lessons with Max Lindblom until Lalla passed her gold test. Through a lot of hard work on Harriet's part, working through the tests far faster than Max would have normally liked to take even such a promising pupil; and though some mild deception on Lalla's part, they managed to have Harriet ready to take her gold test on the same day that Lalla took hers, after which Harriet was ready to compete.

She had only been skating five years, which might seem an eternity to some young people, but which was five years less than some of the other young promising skaters she was competing with had been learning, and seven years less than Lalla. Furthermore, many of the other young competitors had been going to junior competitions since they had passed their inter-silver, and Harriet was new to competing. In this respect it would not have done her any good to have started learning sooner; neither Olivia nor Max Lindblom believed in letting children younger than fifteen years into proper competitions. "The idea of it!" was what Lalla's Nana had to say, when Lalla mentioned the other girls' ages. Still, Harriet worked very hard to draw even with the other girls.

Harriet had also discovered that although all the judges at her tests had been very good and fair, not all of the competition judges were. One of them marked down her figures - Harriet's best event - saying she could see flats in the tracings from Harriet's change loop, meaning that Harriet had stood upright on her skate instead of on the edge. Harriet didn't think she'd stood on the edge, but she respected the judge and stayed quiet until another division was judged, in which the same thing happened to a different little girl. That girl's mother made a fuss and called in a new judge, who said that there weren't flats after all, and the first judge had made a mistake. The first judge said the reflections on the ice had confused her, and the little girl was marked again, but naturally it was too late to mark Harriet's figures a second time. She was very glad no one but Nana was there to watch that day. Nana didn't see why it mattered what edge a change loop was on, but she could see that Harriet was silently working herself into a state about it, and took her to a private spot and let her cry it out.

Harriet was not the natural performer that Lalla was. Her true genius was for the quiet concentration of figure skating, giving style and grace a back seat to perfect tracings. Her free skating gained assurance as she got on, but she was always stiffer than Lalla, and less graceful; and then, she never looked as nice either, despite her mother's careful work on her costumes. Harriet's childhood dream of a lovely career as a professional skater was not to be. After her own morning's work, Harriet stayed at the rink and taught little girls to skate as Lalla had once taught her. It was very hard work, and never warm, and sometimes her legs felt as cotton-woolish as they had before she ever learned to skate. If Harriet did not like coaching, she never said so. She was happy to be able to contribute to her expenses, and she said that.

Edward, who was two and a half years younger than Harriet, was using his beautiful face and friendly manners to sell gloves at a department store. He frequently told his family that he would soon be discovered by a famous producer coming in to buy some gloves, but in the meantime he did not seem unhappy with his life.

Last of all was Lalla, who of course was not really a Johnson at all. Since we saw her last, Lalla had been enjoying life to the fullest. Christina, her manager, was no older than Lalla herself, and no more competent to stand in her way than Max her coach. Lalla was a good-hearted girl, and had no wish to do anything that would have displeased Nanny or Olivia if they heard of it, but she did like being fêted and admired, and she didn't see why she shouldn't go to parties and drink champagne if she wanted to, so long as she came home all right and was at the rink in time for her shows.

Christina didn't see herself why Lalla shouldn't enjoy a good time, so long as it didn't make the papers and trouble Christine; so they got on very well. But all the same, Lalla sometimes wished she didn't go to all of those parties. Some of them in particular she wished she had not gone to. Lalla had the sense that her current existence was too light and giddy, as if she could float off the ground at any moment, her skates not heavy enough to hold her to the ground. She felt especially like that when she drank more than one glass of champagne.

The reason that Christina was Lalla's manager, and not Lalla's Aunt Claudia, is that Aunt Claudia had died of influenza not long after Harriet and Lalla had passed their gold tests. Harriet had tried to be sad, and Lalla had been sad that she really couldn't be sad, she just could not. Uncle David, Aunt Claudia's husband, who genuinely had been sad, had reinstituted Harriet's lessons with Max, and to do the thing properly, made it a skating scholarship in the name of Cyril and Bertha Moore. Olivia thought it was particularly nice that somebody had remembered Lalla's mother in the scholarship, and when Nana heard, she had said "And very nice too," with an extra measure of feeling.

Uncle David, who liked girls and had a very soft heart, had told Lalla that until she was twenty-one, he had to manage her money for her, and that if she wanted to be a professional skater he would support her, although he thought she'd do much better to learn another career in case it didn't work out. This was good advice, but Lalla was all for a skating career, and wouldn't hear him. Weren't her engagements coming in steadily, despite the poor rink conditions and the sport's declining popularity in England? Hadn't a movie man from America been asking questions about sending her overseas to make skating movies?

Therefore, when Lalla turned sixteen, Miss Goldthorpe was reluctantly sent away - and she went reluctantly too, since she agreed with Mr King about the suitability of training for a second career just in case. And Nana had to go home to her own family to care for one of her grown-up children, whose husband had been injured in a factory, and who had six children of her own to look after. So Lalla now, at twenty, although busier than ever and with more people of her own age than she'd dreamed about when she was ten, had very few of the adults left who had surrounded her all her childhood. It was no wonder she felt like she was floating away.

At one of the parties that Lalla wished she hadn't gone to, after she had drunk too much champagne, a tall girl with red hair had told her they had something urgent to discuss, and then took her out onto a balcony where they stood in a dark corner while the girl showed her Lalla the stars and compared Lalla to a star, and then she had kissed her right there on the balcony.

Lalla's first thought had been "You can't do that!" Her second thought was "I shouldn't let her do that!" and before she could have a third thought she suddenly felt like she was surrounded, submerged in blue, swirling water, which started to turn black like the water under the ice, and she was running out of breath, like her parents, drowning - poor Lalla Moore, such a talented girl, but too undisciplined, risk-taking, just like her parents - and she gasped for air.

She opened her eyes to find that she was hanging onto the girl's shoulders, and her third thought was, indignantly, "I haven't lost my footing since I was four years old." She stood up and let go of the girl. "I've wrinkled your dress," she said, for something to say. The girl smoothed out the blue gauze. "It's all right," she replied. Lalla turned without a word, and walked away. It was not all right.

She went home and made herself a cup of hot milk and took it to bed, and tapped her foot on the mattress while she thought. She thought: "I won't go to America after all. And it's clear that I don't want to float away, nor drown like my father and mother. I won't stop skating - I can't! - but I will ask Uncle David if he'd still let me study another career. Maybe fashion drawing," because she'd always liked sketching costumes. "And tomorrow I'll get on the phone and ask Harriet and her mother for their advice," she thought, forgetting for the moment that Harriet did not live with her mother any more, but in a boarding house with three other girls. And with that comfortable thought, she put down her milk and burrowed into the pillow and slept.

Harriet, the next day, explained that Olivia and Charles were in Brighton that weekend, having a holiday. Lalla was not accustomed to people having holidays in Brighton in the winter, but she kept this to herself. She added in return that Uncle David was away on business himself and it was just Lalla and the staff, and would Harriet come and keep her company? Harriet was most willing to come and visit Lalla overnight. At least, that is what Harriet said, but Lalla heard a sad tone in her voice.  
"You needn't if you'd rather not," she said.  
"No, no, I want to," Harriet said anxiously, so it was settled.

 

Lalla watched for Harriet from the window-seat, and went to meet her when she saw her coming down the long, grand path. Wilson would give her hell again for not letting her answer the door properly, particularly after last night's incident with the saucepan of milk and the cup and making more work for her and Cook, but Lalla didn't care.

She quickly found out why Harriet had sounded sad. Harriet had not been selected to skate for England in the European Figure Skating Championships. "I hadn't known you were being considered," Lalla said, hugging her and rubbing her hands warm as they went inside.  
"It was the next step towards the Olympics," Harriet said softly.  
"The Olympics! Harriet, you sneak! You never told me that was what you were aiming for." Harriet hung her head wretchedly.  
"Well, it's not going to happen now, is it?"

 

Lalla wanted to say "Don't talk like that, we'll find a way!" or something encouraging like that, but she wasn't sure herself if Harriet could go to the Olympics. It had all seemed so much easier when they were ten. Harriet caught her hesitation. "But in close fight a champion grim," she said, making it soft and sad, but still musical; unlike Aunt Claudia, who had always made the lines sound like Lady Macbeth telling her husband to screw his courage to the sticking place in one of the plays she and Harriet had seen with Miss Goldthorpe.

"You are a champion grim," Lalla said, staring as closely as she could into Harriet's light, watery grey eyes, trying to force her to see it. She felt the danger, the water, as she leant in - close by her as Harriet's breath. "Really and truly, Harriet, I've never known anyone to work as hard as you have. You're... an inspiration to me."  
"Then at least I've done one thing I set out to," Harriet said with a laugh, and Lalla cursed herself for saying the wrong thing yet again.

Wilson called them to dinner then, and they ate lightly and didn't talk much. Afterwards Lalla took Harriet back up to her room, and they toasted bread just as they'd always done. Harriet told Lalla everything she'd held back before about the last few years, all the things she'd not told anyone, including the judge and the flats. Lalla just listened and held her hand. She knew better than to talk about her own fears just then; and it was odd, but while trying to comfort Harriet she didn't feel like she was drowning or floating away, just right where she was meant to be. For once sitting still seemed as easy as moving.

They put on their nightgowns, and it seemed silly for Harriet to go to the guest room when it was just the two of them, and when this way they could go on talking. But after climbing in beside Lalla, Harriet seemed to go to sleep almost at once.

Lalla propped herself up on her elbow with her chin in her hand. She watched her friend in bed with her, as near by her as when they'd shared a bed at the beach so long ago. She could almost hear the waves. She gently brushed a strand of fine, limp red hair off Harriet's sleeping face. She remembered Harriet's hair as being almost straw-coloured in childhood, but now it was a bright copper like her brother's: beautiful, though an impartial observer would have thought the face it framed was too thin and white and square-jawed to merit the word.

Lalla was not impartial. She felt the same underwater feeling she had felt on the balcony with the other red-headed girl. She knew what it meant. Slowly, she shifted her weight over and gently pressed a kiss on Harriet's sleeping lips. The lips firmly pressed back, and Harriet's arms came up to pull Lalla in. She opened her eyes again to find Harriet watching her, wide-eyed and scared, but still holding Lalla. They leaned in again, as one. Slowly, then faster and faster, they rocked together, and while Lalla combed her fingers through Harriet's hair, Harriet reached under Lalla's nightgown and stroked her hands all the way down Lalla's body. Some time later, they slept.

In the morning, naturally, they had things to discuss.

"We can't keep doing this, you know," said Lalla, wishing that Harriet would say "Of course we can!"  
But Harriet shook her head briskly and said "No, I can see that. I've been thinking about it while you were in the bath, It wouldn't work."  
"Then what are we going to do?" Lalla said, a little crossly. Harriet patted her shoulder the way Nanny had used to pat them both, as if they'd never touched more closely.

"I have some ideas," Harriet said, "but first why don't you tell me why you wanted me here? It can't have been for my sake: Mummy promised she wouldn't tell you about the selection until I did."  
Lalla thought "You never used to have ideas," but managed not to let it out. Instead she told Harriet about feeling like floating away, and then about the girl at the party.

"I don't like your friends," Harriet commented.  
Lalla, who might once have said "Don't you trust me?" or argued the point, replied "Neither do I, much," and went on about how she was thinking of asking Uncle David to let her study something else, while still doing exhibitions. Harriet nodded thoughtfully as she listened.

Lalla took a deep breath and concluded "And I want to keep feeling like I felt last night, all sweet and warm and held tight."  
There was a look on Harriet's face like she wanted the same thing, but she took a deep breath of her own and lay her hands flat on the table.

"I think you should marry Edward," Harriet said.  
"Not Alec?" Harriet shook her head immediately.  
"You don't want me to marry Alec?" Alec was Harriet's nicest brother.  
"I don't want Alec to marry you."  
Lalla swallowed, and suddenly felt better. "All right, then," she said. "Only I don't know Edward as well as the rest of you. He's always seemed rather a pain."  
"He's only a pain because it's all he can do to hold his own with the rest of us, not being clever like Toby, or sensible like Alec. He wasn't so bad before I was so ill, and then I learned to skate. He had to have his own thing. And he's never been really horrid, just affected. It's not his fault people used to stop him in the streets to admire him."

Lalla nodded. She could see the sense. Edward was much like Harriet in looks except far more beautiful by any normal standard. For Lalla there was no contest. Lalla knew she needed to be as closely bound to this family, to Harriet, as could be. With the Johnsons she'd always be on safe footing. And by the same token, the closer she was bound, the nearer Olivia would be to keep an eye on them. She and Harriet couldn't get into any more trouble together. She dared a hug. Harriet returned it.

"We think his beauty's already peaked, you know. He'll probably be perfectly ordinary in five years."  
Lalla smiled happily. "I know."

End


End file.
